Small Craft Warnings.

Out actor David Greenspan steals the show in this revival of an undersung Tennessee Williams work

Small Craft Warnings * Written by Tennessee Williams * Directed by Jeff Cohen * Starring Cristine McMurdo-Wallis, David Greenspan * Tribeca Playhouse, New York City (runs indefinitely)

Small Craft Warnings is Tennessee Williams's 1972 version of a classic genre of American drama--you know, the one about a ragtag assortment of lost souls seeking solace and salvation in a crummy bar.

Monk's Place serves as refuge and battlefield for genteel hooker Violet, her sad-sack companion Steve, illegal abortionist Doc, ball-busting beautician Leona, her overgrown boy toy Bill, and a couple of gay passersby, Quentin and Bobby. They drink, they fight, and each one gets a spotlit soliloquy (the play began as a one-act called Confessional).

When it debuted in 1972, the play got less attention than the cast, which included legendary acting teacher Bill Hickey as Steve and, in a second production the same year, Williams himself in the role of Doc. It will never rank with the playwright's best work, but the Worth Street Theater Company's revival--first mounted last summer and brought back for an open-ended run--makes a case for its moody pleasures. Artistic director Jeff Cohen balances Williams's trademark mixture of rough honesty and lyricism, the broken hearts hiding behind foulmouthed facades.

The performances are erratic. Cristine McMurdo-Wallis should dominate the proceedings as Leona, but she's too earthbound. Meanwhile, David Greenspan as Quentin, the character onstage the least, walks off with the show.

The openly gay Greenspan is one of the best-kept secrets of American theater. He's a genius of sorts, a highly idiosyncratic writer and director who in recent years has devoted his energy to acting in other people's work (most notably the 1996 revival of The Boys in the Band, which won him an Obie). Far removed from the naturalism of TV and movies, his extremely stylized, riveting, even scary performance takes you deep inside the soul of a very smart, very drunk, very self-hating homosexual circa 1967. Connoisseurs of fine acting won't want to miss it.

You shudder to think of Quentin's one long diatribe as Williams's grim self-portrait or his sweeping summation of gay life. But when Bobby, the hippie boy Quentin picks up on the road, refers to him sweetly as "the man with the hang-up," you realize that Williams knew as much about the light as the dark.

Find more on Small Craft Warnings and the other works of Tennessee William at www.advocate.com